How to dry clothes quickly indoors: Our top tips and tricks

If you live somewhere without access to a proper balcony or garden, it’s safe to say that you probably have to put some serious thought into drying your clothes indoors. If you’re lucky enough to have a tumble dryer, then the answer is simple. Those of us without the space or means for one, however, have to get more creative, often dedicating a lot of time, energy and indoor space to the endeavour. 

To make things a little easier, we’ve put together a short guide to drying your washing quickly indoors. Below, we recommend handy appliances you might not have thought to employ, like heated clothes airers and dehumidifiers, both of which can massively speed up the process. Our guide also includes some helpful tips and tricks for getting your clothes to dry more quickly indoors, many of which I use day to day to get my own washing dried and put away.

The best ways to dry clothes quickly indoors

Below are our top four tips for drying clothes quickly indoors. While they’re split into individual sections, all of these ideas can be used in tandem to achieve the best results.

Get your clothes as dry as possible before you start

This one may seem obvious, but in the rush to hang clothes up quickly, sometimes we can forget to get them as dry as possible first. Setting your washing machine to a higher spin setting or adding an extra spin cycle after your initial wash is finished can help you get a head start on drying your clothes and prevent patches of water pooling on your floor.

Use an ergonomic or heated clothes airer

A clothes airer is most people’s go-to option for drying clothes indoors and can be especially handy if you are short on space. However, over the course of my years of renting I’ve ended up using some pretty bulky clothes airers that didn’t help things dry particularly quickly, so I know they’re not all created equal. Our round-up of the best clothes airers will provide a massive upgrade on whatever airer happened to be in your flat when you moved in, offering space-saving multi-tier options, quick-drying hanging airers and even clever solutions like radiator-mounted drying racks.

As someone who depends on a clothes airer for all my drying, I can also personally vouch for this tip. The way most airers are set up means they only dry one side of your clothes at a time. To combat this, try flipping your washing over before you go to bed each night, to speed up the process. I’ve found this trick especially helpful in winter, when it seems like things are going to stay slightly damp forever. Similarly, during the colder months, placing your clothes airer near a radiator and rotating it from time to time can also help get your clothes dry more quickly.

If you want to kick things up a notch and have some money to spend, a heated clothes airer is an indoor drying option that’s hard to beat. Adding a mains-powered heating element to the standard design, a heated clothes airer combines the quick-drying heat of a radiator and the extra drying space and efficient design of a clothes airer. Heated airers typically use as little 0.3kWh and rarely higher than 1.2kWh per hour, compared to a tumble dryer, which uses 4.5kWh for a single cycle on average.

Dry clothes using a dehumidifier 

We’re generally big fans of dehumidifiers. These handy appliances work to remove excess moisture from the air in your home. This helps combat damp and mould, two common issues many UK homes suffer with. While a dehumidifier isn’t the most obvious solution people would consider to help dry clothes, it can be an effective way to cut drying times. Drawing excess moisture from your clothes not only speeds up the drying process but also prevents masses of damped clothes from releasing their moisture into your walls and home – win-win.

Before you buy one, however, you should know that there are different types and sizes of dehumidifiers. They also offer different features, with some even featuring specific laundry settings. To help you choose the right model for your needs, we’ve created a dedicated page for the best dehumidifier for drying clothes and written a guide to explain what a dehumidifier does.

Improve ventilation and air flow in your home

When it comes to drying clothes, airflow is your friend. Drying your clothes in a well ventilated area will help them dry more quickly and prevent excess moisture becoming trapped in your home. If you can’t hang your clothes next to an open window or vented area, setting up a fan in front of your clothes airer is a neat alternative solution.

With UK summers seemingly getting hotter every year, more of us are purchasing quality fans and this is a great way to get some use out of your fan all year round. Personally, I set my fan to oscillate at 45-degrees and stand it in front of my clothes airer, which I find helps clothes dry quicker during the winter months and allows me to get on an extra load of laundry done during the week.